Still Losing Hotel Rooms - Carnegie Community Action Project
Still Losing Hotel Rooms - Carnegie Community Action Project
Still Losing Hotel Rooms - Carnegie Community Action Project
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2<br />
Introduction<br />
This report is about the housing situation for<br />
very low-income people who live in single<br />
rooms in privately owned residential hotels<br />
in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES).<br />
Sometimes these rooms are called single room<br />
occupancy rooms or SROs. The report follows<br />
Disappearing Homes, the loss of affordable<br />
housing in the DTES, published in 2008 by the<br />
<strong>Carnegie</strong> <strong>Community</strong> <strong>Action</strong> <strong>Project</strong> (CCAP).<br />
This year’s report includes information from<br />
CCAP’s 2009 survey of privately owned hotels.<br />
It also includes a summary of information from<br />
the city, province and some non profit housing<br />
providers about empty hotel rooms and<br />
construction of new, affordable, self-contained<br />
housing.<br />
While many people think that the housing<br />
situation in the DTES is getting better, DTES<br />
residents and CCAP members still experience<br />
eviction by rent increase, horrific maintenance<br />
conditions, illegal guest fees, and exorbitant<br />
double bunking rents. About 700 of our<br />
neighbours are still homeless. CCAP also<br />
fears that hotel owners may evict permanent<br />
residents during the Olympics so they can get<br />
more money renting on a daily or weekly basis.<br />
Although the City of Vancouver does regular<br />
reports on the hotels, and CCAP has used some<br />
of their information in this survey, these reports<br />
give the impression that the city’s goal of 1<br />
for 1 replacement of SRO housing with new<br />
self-contained units is being met. They don’t<br />
include information about the housing crisis<br />
for people in the SROs, the hundreds of people<br />
with no housing, or the probable increase<br />
in homelessness when SRO rent increases<br />
force low-income people onto the street. They<br />
mention nothing about people being forced to<br />
double bunk in tiny rooms because that’s the<br />
only way they can save enough support money<br />
from their welfare cheques to buy food.<br />
The city’s reports can do this because they<br />
aren’t focusing on the reality of housing in the<br />
DTES from the point of view of its residents and<br />
because they count provincially owned SROs as<br />
new social housing. While they may be newly<br />
“social,” none of them are new housing and<br />
most are not additional housing because they<br />
were full when purchased.<br />
CCAP wanted to do this report to expose the<br />
real housing issues in the neighbourhood.<br />
Without clear information it will be impossible<br />
to create the political will to improve the<br />
situation. We hope this report will provide this<br />
clear information. We are not able to provide<br />
information on maintenance issues in the<br />
hotels because we don’t have the authority to<br />
enter and inspect them.